T-Series on Thursday again pulled ahead of YouTube’s PewDiePie as the No. 1 most-subscribed channel on the platform — but again the vlogger-gamer-comedian fans’ rallied behind him to retake the position.

As of Wednesday at noon PT, T-Series’ main YouTube channel had 90.394 million subscribers, topping 90.387 million for PewDiePie. By 12:30 p.m. PT, however, PewDiePie had edged up to 90.400 million vs. T-Series’ 90.396 million, and PewDiePie held the lead going into the evening.

On Thursday around 3:30 a.m. PT, T-Series climbed back on top for several hours — but after PewDiePie tweeted “This is not the end” (along with a BTS meme) his channel resumed the No. 1 spot. PewDiePie stood at 90.682 million subs as of 5 p.m. PT Thursday, with T-Series trailing at 90.654 million.

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The competition for first place between T-Series and the controversial Swedish-born YouTuber — whose name is Felix Kjellberg — has been closely followed by the YouTube community. It’s been viewed by some as tantamount to a culture war for YouTube, with PewDiePie as the native creator standard-bearer up against a corporate entertainment interest.

The latest seesaws come after a bizarrely horrific turn of events last week in the “PewDiePie vs. T-Series” footrace — which may have deflated the pro-PewDiePie movement. The alleged attacker in the New Zealand mass shootings, in a Facebook live-stream of the massacre, reportedly urged people to “subscribe to PewDiePie.” The YouTube star has been criticized for making anti-Semitic jokes and using racist language in the past. In response to the shootings, Kjellberg tweeted at 1 a.m. ET on March 15, “I feel absolutely sickened having my name uttered by this person. My heart and thoughts go out to the victims, families and everyone affected by this tragedy.”

Subscriber counts for PewDiePie and T-Series have been running neck-and-neck over the past week, and T-Series actually has been briefly on top for a few minutes in recent days before it built a bigger lead Wednesday.

In any case, the rivalry has made PewDiePie and T-Series the two most-subscribed channels on YouTube, well ahead of the next closest channel, 5-Minute Crafts, which has 52.1 million subs for its DIY videos.

All that said, YouTube subscriber counts aren’t meaningful except as a signal of relative popularity. They don’t reflect relative earning power or even average video views. The “PewDiePie vs. T-Series” storyline has become a kind of meme game, and many of the millions of new subscribers on each side could be low-activity accounts. The two channels trade in different formats: Note that T-Series has more than 65 billion views overall to date for its music videos, three times PewDiePie’s count of less than 21 billion lifetime views for his “let’s play” videos, vlogs and comedy sketches.

The edgy pranks PewDiePie is fond of staging went over the line in 2017: Through crowdsourcing platform Fiverr, he paid two guys in Sri Lanka to hold up a sign reading “Death to All Jews” as well as a man dressed as Jesus to say “Hitler did absolutely nothing wrong.” Disney’s Maker Studios and YouTube subsequently cut business ties with him. Kjellberg, who said he was trying to show the insane things people are willing to do for money, deleted the offending videos and apologized.

PewDiePie, of course, has turned his fight with T-Series into a content-creation and fan-engagement opportunity, which has included “Bitch Lasagna.” a music video dissing T-Series. As part of his competition with T-Series, Kjellberg in December launched a fundraising campaign for CRY, an Indian children’s rights organization, which raised nearly $230,000.

The crusade to keep PewDiePie No. 1 is a microcosm of the unhappiness among many YouTube fans about what is perceived to be a growing colonization of the platform by corporations and mainstream celebrities — and YouTube’s promotion of them. Example: YouTube Rewind 2018 became the most-disliked video ever less than a week after it was posted, reflecting a distaste for the annual mashup’s prominent placement of celebs like Will Smith over native creators including PewDiePie, who was acknowledged only in a few sly animated references.

T-Series’ YouTube channel features a mix of music videos and film trailers. The most-viewed T-Series video to date is the official video for Guru Randhawa’s “Lahore,” which has racked up nearly 700 million views in a little over a year.

“Music for us has never been about Excel sheets; it’s not a number on a paper,” T-Series president Neeraj Kalyan said in an announcement when the channel hit 50 million followers last summer. “It’s a passion, driven by belief in our content, backing our belief with aggression and passion and this has remained our mantra for years which has led us here.”

T-Series, in addition to its primary YouTube channel, operates more than two dozen others. The Mumbai-based entertainment conglomerate produces movies including “Hindi Medium,” “Tumhari Sulu,” “Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety,” “Raid” and “Blackmail.” T-Series also sells a line of consumer electronics.

The Bollywood-fueled rise of T-Series on YouTube comes amid rapid recent growth of India’s internet user base. There were 447 million broadband subscribers in India as of the end of June 2018, up 49% year over year, according to the country’s telecom regulatory authority.

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